Aylwin Part 15

'But,' said she with a sigh, as we sat down on the boulder, 'I'm afraid we sha'n't be able to stay long. See how the tide is rising, and the sea is wild. The tides just now, father says, come right up to the cliff in the cove, and once locked in between Flinty Point and Needle Point there is no escape.'

'Yes, darling,' I muttered to myself, drawing her to me and burying my face in her bosom, 'there is one escape, only one.'

For death seemed to me the only escape from a tragedy far, far worse than death.

If she made me any answer I heard it not; for, as I sat there with closed eyes, schemes of escape fluttered before me and were dismissed at the rate of a thousand a second. A fiery photograph of the cove was burning within my brain, my mind was absorbed in examining every cranny and every protuberance in the semicircular wall of the cliff there depicted; over and over again I was examining that brain-picture, though I knew every inch of it, and knew there was not in the cliff-wall foothold for a squirrel.

X

The moon mocked me, and seemed to say:

'The blasting spectacle s.h.i.+ning there on the other side of that heap of earth must be pa.s.sed, or Needle Point can never be reached; and unless it is reached instantly you and she can never leave the cove.'

'Then we will never leave it,' I whispered to myself, jumping up.

As I did so I found for the first time that her forehead had been resting against my head; for the furious rate at which the wheels of thought were moving left no vital current for the sense of touch, and my flesh was numbed.

'Something has happened,' she said. 'And why did you keep whispering "yes, yes"? Whom were you whispering to?'

The truth was that, in that dreadful trance, my conscience had been saying to me, 'Have you a right to exercise your power over this girl by leading her like a lamb to death?' and my love had replied, 'Yes, ten thousand times yes.'

'Winifred,' I said, 'I would die for you.'

'Yes, Henry,' said she, 'I know it; but what have we to do with death now?'

'To save you from harm this flesh of mine would rejoice at crucifixion; to save you from death this soul and body of mine would rejoice to endure a thousand years of h.e.l.l-fire.'

She turned pale, amazed at the delirium into which I had pa.s.sed.

'To save you from harm, dear, I would,' said I, with a quiet fierceness that scared her, 'immolate the whole human race--mothers, and fathers, and children; I would make a hecatomb of them all to save this body of yours, this sweet body, alive.'

But I could not proceed. What I had meant to say was this,--

'And yet, Winnie, I have brought you here to this boulder to die!'

But I could not say it--my tongue rebelled and would not say it.

Winifred was so full of health and enjoyment of life that, courageous as she was. I felt that the prospect of certain and imminent death must appal her; and to see the look of terror break over her face confronting death was what I could not bear. And yet the thing must be said. But at this very moment, when my perplexity seemed direst, a blessed thought came to me--a subterfuge holier than truth. I knew the Cymric superst.i.tion about 'the call from the grave,' for had not she herself just told me of it?

'I will turn Superst.i.tion, accursed Superst.i.tion itself, to account,'

I muttered. 'I will pretend that I am enmeshed in a web of Fate, and doomed to die here myself. Then, if I know my Winifred, she will, of her own free mind, die with me.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'I have to tell you something that I know must distress you sorely on my account--something that must wring your heart, dear, and yet it must be told.'

She turned her head sharply round with a look of alarm that almost silenced me, so pathetic was it. On that courageous face I had not seen alarm before, and this was alarm for evil coming to me. It shook my heart--it shook my heart so that I could not speak.

'I felt,' said she, 'that something awful had happened. And it affects yourself, Henry?'

'It affects myself.'

'And very deeply?'

'Very deeply, Winnie.'

Then, pulling from my pocket the silver casket and the parchment scroll, I said, 'It has relation to these.'

'_That_ I felt,' said she; 'how could it be otherwise? Oh, the miscreant! I curse him; I curse him!'

'Winifred,' I said, 'between me and this casket, and the cross mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link. The cross is an amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill. It has been disturbed; it has been stolen from my father's grave, and there is but one way of setting right that disturbance. To avert unspeakable calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin and that of her to whom this amulet was given) a sacrifice is demanded.'

'Henry, you terrify me to death. What is the sacrifice? Oh G.o.d! Oh G.o.d!'

'My father's son must die, Winnie.'

She turned ashen pale, but struggling to be playful, she said, 'I fear that the family of Aylwin and the family of somebody else must even take the calamity and bear it; for I don't mean my Henry to die, let me a.s.sure both families of _that_.'

'Ah! but, Winnie, I am under a solemn oath and pledge to bear this penalty; and we part to-night, That shriek which so appalled you--'

'Well, well, the shriek?' said she, in a frenzy of impatience.

I made no answer, but she answered herself.

'That shriek was a call to you,' she cried, and then burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. 'It _cannot_ be,' she said. 'It cannot and shall not be; G.o.d is too good to suffer it,' Then she fixed her eyes upon me, and sobbed: 'Ah, it is _true_! I feel it is all true! Yes, they are calling you, and that is why my soul answered the call. Ah, when I saw you just now lift your head from my breast with a face grey and wizened as an old man's--when I saw you look at me, I knew that something dreadful had happened. Oh, I knew, I knew! but I thought it had happened to _me_. The love and pity in your eyes when you opened them upon me made me think it was my trouble, and not yours, that disturbed you. And now I know it is yours, and you are going to die!

They are calling you. Yes, you are going to let the tide drown you!

Oh, my love my love!' and her grief was so acute that I knew not at first whether in this I had done well after all.

'Winifred,' I said, 'you must bear this. I have always been ready to take death when it should come. I have at least had one blessed time with Winifred on the sands--Winifred the beloved and beautiful girl--one night, as the crown to the happy days that have been mine with Winifred the beloved and beautiful child. And that night, as we were walking by the sea, it seemed to me that such happiness as was ours can come but once--that never again could there be a night equal to that.'

Smiles broke through her tears as she listened to me. I had struck the right chord.

'And _I_ thought so too,' she said. 'It was indeed a night of bliss.

Indeed, indeed G.o.d has been good to us, Henry,' and she fell into my arms again.

'And now, Winnie,' I said, 'we must kiss and part--part for ever.'

Yes, I had struck the right chord. As she lay in my arms I felt her soft bosom moving with a little hysterical laugh of derision when I said we must part. And then she rose and sat beside me upon the boulder, looking calm and fearless at the tide as it got nearer and nearer to Needle Point.

'Yes, dear,' I said, looking in the same direction, 'you must be going; see how the waves are surrounding the Point. You must run, Winnie--you must run, and leave me.'

'Yes,' said she, still gazing across to the Point, 'as you say, I must run, but not yet, dear; plenty of time yet,' and she smiled to herself as she used to do in the old days, when as a child she had made up her mind to do something.

Then without another word she took her shawl from her shoulders, and pulled it out to see its length. And soon I felt her fingers stealing my penknife from my waistcoat-pocket, and saw her deftly cut up the shawl, strip after strip, and weave it and knot it into a rope, and tie the rope around her waist, and then she stooped to tie it around me.

It was when I felt her warm breath about my neck as she stooped over me to tie that rope, that love was really revealed to me; it was then, and not till then, that all my previous love for Winifred seemed as the flicker of a rushlight to Salaman's cloak of fire; and a feeling of bliss unutterable came upon me, and the night air seemed full of music, and the sky above seemed opening, as she whispered, 'Henry, Henry, Henry, in a few minutes you will be mine.' But the very confidence with which she spoke these simple words startled me as from a dream. 'Suppose,' I thought, 'suppose my last drop of bliss with Winnie were being tasted now!' In a moment I felt like a coward.

But then there came a loud crash and a thunder from behind the landslip.

'The settlement!' I cried. 'The coming in of the tide has made the landslip settle!'